In-Box Review

Introduction

The Hungarian light tank Toldi was designed based on the Swedish L-60 light tank and was produced by MÁVAG (Magyar Királyi Államvasutak Gépgyára; Hungarian Royal State Railroads' Machine Factory) from 1938. The initial version (Toldi I) was equipped with a 20mm Solothurn automatic gun, similar to the Csaba and ADGZ armoured cars, while Toldi II and Toldi III possessed a 40mm gun and thicker armour on the front. First battles on the eastern front revealed that Toldi tanks were not a match to Soviet armour and anti-tank equipment and they suffered serious losses.

For a long time Toldi tanks have been neglected by styrene manufacturers until HobbyBoss announced their project and released all 3 variants to the market. However, initial excitement was soon gone when the numerous errors and omissions became obvious.

SBS Model is a small resin manufacturer from Hungary that already made a number of correction sets for Toldi tanks, including barrels and turrets and now it is time for suspension and road wheels. I have been waiting for this set for more than a year, but the result is totally worth it. Let’s have a closer look at the contents of the box.

Contents

The item ref #35015 is universal for all Toldi versions – I/II and III. It comes in a small cardboard box with an image of the completed product on the top and precautions on the back. The grey resin parts are packed inside a zip lock plastic bag and wrapped in bubble packaging material. A small instruction sheet shows the road wheel assembly, but no directions for the other parts are given. Casting quality is of high standard as always, and wheels are already removed from the larger casting blocks, although some minor cleaning and polishing would be still necessary. Suspension parts are located on casting blocks and the number on the casting block is the same as corresponding part in the HobbyBoss kit. This is an actual reason why there are no instructions for these parts, even though it took some time for me to realize that.

The road wheels are made of two halves and they are so much different than plastic version. First of all they have markings on the rim, better and appropriate bolt details on the wheel hub cap and wheel disk, a more accurate shape of the disk and correct number of bolts. If I am not mistaken they were 3D designed and printed first and then casted. The wheels are already removed from the casting blocks but some cleaning is necessary, especially for the lightening holes on the disk. After that, one has to install six 2,8mm brass rods between the wheel halves so that they look as the real ones. Sounds a bit challenging and I wish they included a bag with small resin pins similar to MasterClub resin track pins as making 48 tiny rods is not very appealing. But if you want the road wheels to look like a replica of a real one there is no other option but to do these small rods.

Next are the suspension parts that include arms for first and last road wheel and road wheel arm housing covers. As mentioned above the number on the casting block is the same as in plastic kit and they even have same location points on the contact surface to match the plastic hull. The difference in shape is pretty obvious and I included some references from Kubinka for comparison (taken by Timur Pakuro). As one can notice there is no hull bottom detail on the HobbyBoss kit either, but that is another story…

Conclusions

In conclusion, we have an excellent set that details the Toldi kit’s suspension and road wheels making it an accurate model at least from that point. What is worrying me is that putting together the wheels, the suspension, a new turret, an exterior detail set, tools and photo etched fenders we basically get a full resin kit with only hull tub from the HobbyBoss kit…but that is another story again.

Well done, SBS Model!

SUMMARY

Highs: High quality upgrade that fixes issues with Toldi tank suspension and wheels in HobbyBoss kits.Lows: You will have to make 48 small 2,8mm rods for the road wheels. Verdict: Very highly recommended for all Toldi kits.